Why is Couillard suddenly trashing Muslims? Because it works.

One can easily mix metaphors when describing Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard. Imagine a tubful of grey porridge dressed in an unremarkable blue suit, standing on the deck of a steady ship as it traverses the choppy waters of Quebec’s political ocean.

Trust me, this is no insult. Couillard’s ability to be at once earnest and inoffensive has served the trained surgeon well in politics. As his opponents have quickly found out, it is damned near impossible to get angry in public at Couillard without coming off as shrill and petty. He is the anti-Jean Charest, less of a lightning rod and more of a comfortable leather couch — the Dos Equis man with exactly 78 per cent less charisma.

Along with blunting the many attacks against the Liberal Party of Quebec, Couillard’s bonhomie has endeared him to the hardiest of the party’s supporters — anglophones and religious minorities.

A typically magnanimous moment for Couillard came in late January, in the wake of the shootings at a Quebec City mosque. Six people died and many more were wounded when a gunman entered the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec during prayers and opened fire.

For many Quebec politicians, the shootings amounted to a reckoning of sorts. PQ Leader Jean-François Lisée once advocated for banning of the Muslim religious veil. Coalition Avenir Québec Leader François Legault has mused about revoking the citizenship of anyone who dares to wear a ‘burkini’.

Both Lisée and Legault were forced to stand onstage about 200 metres from the scene of the crime to profess their sorrow at a public vigil. Having never previously scapegoated Quebec’s 243,000 Muslims for political gain, Couillard was unburdened by the need for such hypocrisy.

No longer. When a Quebec man stabbed an American cop in the neck last week, Couillard was rightly quick to denounce the attack. Yet the alleged perpetrator’s religion — he is Muslim — was suddenly of particular consequence for Couillard. “You cannot disconnect this type of event, terrorism, from Islam in general,” Couillard said, adding that Muslims must “take responsibility” in the face of such attacks.

To say this is a 180 degree turn for the 31st premier of Quebec is practically an insult to the intelligence of semicircles. Why, it seems like just yesterday that Couillard was denouncing exactly this kind of language. “All talk of exclusion towards one community or another is bad, and I would say that, in the case of the Muslim community, violent radicals feed on this kind of Islamophobic or exclusionary talk to fuel their recruiting efforts,” Couillard once said.

For a variety of reasons, a significant part of the Quebec electorate has a difficult time with religious minorities. Other parties have never shied away from exploiting this fact. The Liberals haven’t had to … until now.

Yesterday? Actually, Couillard said as much on January 27, 2015 — less than a year into his term as premier, when his electoral halo was still aglow. Back then, all was well on Planet Couillard. He’d brought the Liberals back into power less than two years after the party had become the political manifestation of herpes and bad breath; the opposition Parti Québécois was again a leaderless mess, in part because of a vote split with the the Coalition Avenir Québec.

Today, with the natural order of things in Quebec politics in flux, the premier can scarcely afford to be as benevolent. Support for the Parti Québécois has declined to just 22 per cent, according to one poll. The PQ’s promise to not hold a referendum apparently has pushed federalists — who otherwise would vote for the Liberals — into the bosom of the CAQ. For Liberals, the spectre of the nationalist francophone vote coalescing behind one party — not split between two — is the apocalypse.

This is precisely why Couillard feels the need to go pseudo-nativist when it comes to the swarthy and occasionally veiled amongst us. For a variety of reasons — historical, demographic, linguistic and, sadly, fear-based — a significant part of the Quebec electorate has a difficult time with religious minorities. Other parties — the PQ and the CAQ very much included — have never shied away from exploiting this fact. The Liberals haven’t had to … until now.

For progressives, there are bright spots in the same poll. Quebecers are more likely to vote for sexual minorities than other Canadians, for example, and are generally favourable to having an atheist political leader. Yet the issue of religion in general — and Islam in particular — remains the third rail in Quebec politics, not to be touched and certainly not to be voted for.

The 2015-vintage Couillard knew this as well as the current incarnation. In 2015, he’d have called for calm in the wake of a similar attack on a police officer. He would have reminded us, in that achingly patrician lilt of his, that one attacker doesn’t stand for an entire religion — before pointing out that Islamic terrorism’s body count is disproportionally borne by Muslims themselves.

In elegizing Muslims, however, Couillard has always known they can be decent scapegoats when the circumstances dictate. Given the cloistered nature of Quebec politics — where the Liberals have a virtual monopoly on the linguistic and religious minority vote in the province — Couillard can demonize one or both without much in the way of political consequences. After all, if you’re a Quebec Muslim, who else are you going to vote for?

In politics, circumstances eventually force you to become what you profess to hate. Faced with stiffening opposition, the inoffensive porridge-grey blob that is Couillard is suddenly reanimated and angry. He doesn’t seem bothered by how he has made himself a hypocrite in the process.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

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Martin Patriquin has spent much of his career writing about the politics and distinct societies that make Quebec percolate like no other place. The Montreal native is a political commentator on CBC’s Power & Politics, and has contributed to Radio-Canada and the BBC. The National Magazine Award winner has written for the New York Times, Globe And Mail, National Post, Walrus magazine, Maclean’s, Literary Review of Canada and others.